High-tech historic racecars help build smarter cars for our future

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Historic car races might seem like the last place you’d find modern technology. The cars are lovingly restored to their full, authentic racing glory, and care is taken not to allow modern tweaks to improve their performance. Surprisingly, though, both the pits and the cars are crammed with modern technology to help drivers improve their performance. Long-term benefits from tech at the race track isn’t confined to racers, though. Researchers are hoping to use what they find by monitoring drivers’ bodies and brains, along with the cars, to build better and safer cars for all of us.

Using the ultimate GPS to coach drivers

Unlike modern race cars, historic cars don’t come with arrays of sensors. That doesn’t stop teams from fully instrumenting their cars and learning from the results. One of the most powerful tools at their disposal is a simple, high-performance GPS device. By recording the exact position of the car as it laps the track, drivers can look back at how they performed and get coached on improvements. Some current units use dual antennas to not only track vehicle position within one inch, but pitch and slip to within a fraction of a degree by using both GPS and the Russian GLONASS systems. By reviewing the results from practice laps, drivers can see how close they are coming to the car’s limits of performance, and whether they can improve at race time.

An even more effective technique is to have a pro driver “coach” run the same track and compare results. By lining up the two logs, it’s possible to see what improvements can be made. A common example is that seasoned pros will brake later and more aggressively than less experienced drivers — yielding faster times around the track.

GoPro goes wild at the track

You can’t go more than a few feet at a historic car race without seeing a poster or banner promoting GoPro. That’s with good reason. Nearly every team uses these tiny, relatively low-tech, cameras to record not just every moment, but every angle, of a race. While monitoring devices are not allowed during many races, cameras are. By placing one camera near the driver’s feet, and another looking at the course, teams can evaluate the driver’s actions after the race.

This is a huge breakthrough for auto racing. Unlike most other sports, it isn’t possible to watch every part of an auto race at the same time — and in many courses large sections can’t be seen at all from the pits. This makes coaching especially difficult, as the only record of on-track situations and drivers’ responses may be the driver’s adrenaline-fogged memory.

By equipping the GoPro units with WiFi dongles, and giving the driver a remote to activate them, the cameras can be turned on and their video synchronized automatically. After the race, a quick edit in Final Cut or Premiere allows side-by-side videos of the race and the driver to be created. The result is the ultimate coaching tool: a “tell no lies” log of everything the driver did, and didn’t do, to react to situations on the track. The technique is as portable as the race car, so it can be used at any track, like Laguna Seca where this Lotus is racing in the world-famous Monterey Motorsports Reunion.

The video shows front, driver, and back views as pro driver Mikel Miller carves up the field at Laguna Seca in a historic Lotus 23B. The GoPro WiFi cameras synchronize automatically, so its possible to relate steering corrections and pedal actions to action on the track. This is not only a great training tool, but it enables the research of groups like the Revs program at Stanford, who are using data from race car drivers to build the self-driving cars of the future.

Making old cars safer to race

Even though most historic race cars don’t reach the same speeds as their more modern counterparts, they can be a lot more dangerous to drive. Modern safety features are missing, and mechanical failures are common. Fortunately there are some safety upgrades to the cars and to the drivers’ equipment that make them safer to drive than they were in their prime.

Most obvious are the drivers’ outfits. Full-face helmets with neck support replace the leather caps and goggles, and later open-faced “hat-only” helmets, common for many decades of auto racing. The helmets are only the most visible piece of updated clothing. Multi-layered, fire-resistant, Nomex suits and gloves give the drivers much better odds of surviving crashes and car fires, with the inner layer helping to wick away moisture. These outfits don’t come without a cost. A helmet, suit and gloves retail for nearly $5,000, although historic car racing is in the same “if you have to ask you can’t afford it” class as yacht racing, so it’s a small price to pay to protect the owner/drivers.

One safety technology you won’t find in all the cars at a historic race like the one at Laguna Seca is seatbelts. While most of the cars have rollbars and serious safety harnesses for the drivers, some of them don’t have any roll protection and drivers would just as soon be thrown clear of the vehicle in the event it goes head over heels. Clearly this kind of racing is not for the faint of heart.

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http://profiles.google.com/johnnynilsson81 Johnny Nilsson

I dont understand this article, you write that having cameras in the cars is a big breakthru for auto racing, i do hope you mean specifically for this historic racing and not auto racing overall since we have had cameras in auto racing for quite some time now, and the last part bout the safety, rly? …

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

Cameras are a breathrough for racing historics. Unlike custom-built modern race cars, the historic cars are difficult to instrument, so synchronized video is a great way to see exactly what the driver is doing at each point and compare with other drivers, etc.

http://geek.com/ sal cangeloso

I think the title makes it pretty clear that we’re talking about “historic racecars”

http://profiles.google.com/johnnynilsson81 Johnny Nilsson

Yeah i know but he writes ” A big breakthru for auto racing.”

http://profiles.google.com/johnnynilsson81 Johnny Nilsson

I dont understand this article, you write that having cameras in the cars is a big breakthru for auto racing, i do hope you mean specifically for this historic racing and not auto racing overall since we have had cameras in auto racing for quite some time now, and the last part bout the safety, rly? …

Michael Casavant

What about programmable computers? Haltech, Microtech, MegaSquirt, etc. Some of the stricter rules dis-allow them, but many race series prefer these technologies because they make the car more reliable. More cars on track = better racing.

Also, *ALL* race series now-a-days use transponder based timing systems.

Don’t forget using computers like Traqmate with G-sensors and aero sensors to help finely tune that cars.

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

Michael–Good points. Those are all cool tech, but some of them aren’t allowed during races for the historic cars, so we didn’t dwell on those. At the Monterey Historics, for example, even camera mounts are regulated.

On G-sensors, I’m curious how much of the load is now being carried by superaccurate GPS units. RaceLogic, for example, touts it VBOX3i as being insanely accurate and only mentions GPS & GLONASS for its native data acquisition. I’d love to see a comparison of what’s possible with position-based data versus a native accelerometer.

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